This invention relates to football helmets and especially to the face guards thereof which must be securely but yieldably fastened to the helmet. That is, the face mask must be shock mounted so as to move relative to the helmet upon any severe impact, and such that it returns to its original installed position intact with the helmet. The helmet is a tough shell with internal padding fitted over the football player's head and ears, and with a face opening defined by the lower edge of a brow portion above the eyes of the player, and by the forward edges of ear portions at opposite sides of the helmet. The face guard is a grid of bar elements that cross and are interconnected so as to be integral and meet the requirements of the individual player. There are many individual styles of such face guards, it being a general object of this invention to provide a shock absorbing anchor strap that reliably secures the face guard to the helmet at the ear portions thereof and an anchor strap that is easily cut loose as circumstances may require.
Characteristically, the face guards have a transverse mounting bar fixed to the brow portion of the helmet to rotate on a transverse horizontally disposed axis, whereby the face guard inherently swings until secured to the sides of the helmet in spaced relation to the said rotational axis. Anchor bars are angularly disposed at the sides of the face guard so as to transfer tangential forces through a strap-like fitting and into the ear portion of the helmet. The natural disposition of the face opening edges at said ear portions is vertical, in which case it is only natural and expedient that the face guard have complementary vertically disposed anchor bars at opposite sides thereof. Force application at the anchor strap is tangential to a radial line drawn from the axis of rotation at the mounting bar. Accordingly, it is an object of this invention to provide an anchor strap for use with face guards having side anchor bars and such that impact forces are absorbed tangentially from the mounting axis and into the ear portions of the helmet.
A typical face guard for football helmets has at least two chin bars that embrace the lower face of the player, and these are upper and lower bars, and often an intermediate bar is disposed therebetween, crossed and connected to the vertical anchor bars and also to the side extensions of the mounting bar. In this manner, openings are formed to receive the anchor straps at a substantial radius from the mounting axis, and all of which is laterally displaced and out of line from the player's vision. Thus, a player's vision is not impaired by the anchor bars complementary to the vertical edges of the helmet ear portions to which the otherwise rotatable face guard is to be anchored. Overlying each ear portion of the helmet the crossed bar members of the face guard form anchor openings through which the anchor straps can be laced to pull the face guard into position on the helmet, and against one of said bars (at each side) there is a buffer means and fastener means that have cushioned engagement adapted to absorb shock. It is an object of this invention to provide an anchor strap and buffer means therefor which has a shock damping action in both tension and compression modes, and which is also flexible so as to compensate for misalignments.
Prior art football helmets have been fitted with face guards through the application thereto of intermediate block-like fittings of yieldable semi-hard plastic referred to generally as straps, for their split or wrap-around configuration that embraces the anchor bar of the face guard. It has been common practice to attach these blocks or straps to the helmets by means of a screw fastener passing therethrough and also through the helmet in each instance. The hole necessary for this attachment weakens the helmet by creating break points that start fractures and/or separations. This weakened condition is then worsened when a face guard of different configuration is applied to a helmet which requires drilling of new holes, and accordingly there are restrictions as to how close adjacent holes may be placed, for example not closer than 0.5 inch, which is often impossible. Consequently, otherwise good helmets are discarded when there are too many holes therethrough, when a new face guard cannot be properly installed within the minimum hole space requirement, and very often because the helmet has become weakened and damaged or cracked so as to be dangerous. Therefore, it is an object of this invention to provide an anchor strap and buffer means for installation of face on protective helmets without penetration of the helmet, thereby eliminating any fastener holes that heretofore have weakened said helmets.